I like these ideas. <br>Especially the idea of talking to people before they come in.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 3:07 PM, VonGuard <span dir="ltr">&lt;<a href="mailto:vonguard@gmail.com">vonguard@gmail.com</a>&gt;</span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><p>Here&#39;s an idea. When someone buzzes to get in, let&#39;s take a moment to use the speaker to talk to them remotely. Perhaps a simple password? Or maybe even having a camera on the entryway so we can see who&#39;s asking to come in, and we can post the banned persons images next to the buzzer.</p>

<p>We could change the password every week or month, and post it on the wiki or list in a clever location. Homeless people would be unlikely to figure out where to find the passwords, and if we change it often enough, we could keep them confounded.</p>

&gt; NoiseBridge community.<br>&gt; <br>&gt; I pray that the &quot;root cause&quot; of the current situation is what you posited<br>&gt; that it might be:<br>&gt; <br>&gt; &lt;snip&gt;<br>&gt; <br>&gt; I&#39;m not sure, but it seems like part of what was going on that night<br>

&gt; (and over the last few days) was that Philip looks for homeless people<br>&gt; in difficulty to take back to his place so that he can provide them<br>&gt; &quot;therapy&quot;,<br>&gt; &lt;/snip&gt;<br>&gt; <br>&gt; <br>

&gt; I don&#39;t (think I) know Philip, but it sounds as his heart is in the right<br>&gt; place. Hopefully he can be approached and have your following paragraph<br>&gt; explained to him:<br>&gt; <br>&gt; &lt;snip&gt;<br>

&gt; If people want to make Noisebridge into a community soup kitchen,<br>&gt; resource center, and squat, and invite people in off the street, that<br>&gt; will radically change the nature of the space and the problems it faces<br>

&gt; and who wants to come here and why.<br>&gt; &lt;/snip&gt;<br>&gt; <br>&gt; <br>&gt; I hope that he can understand that this activity fits into that fuzzy gray<br>&gt; area between &quot;Do-ocracy&quot; and an activity that needs &quot;consensus&quot;. No foul<br>

&gt; for accidentally stepping over the line as long as he respects the results<br>&gt; of a &quot;call for consensus&quot; arrived at the Tuesday meeting.<br>&gt; <br>&gt; If we are lucky enough that this is truly the root cause of the uptick, then<br>

&gt; hopefully, we can mitigate the situation without having to go into lockdown<br>&gt; mode with video cameras, booby traps, and alligator pits. All we will need<br>&gt; to do is 1) stop having new &quot;therapy patients&quot; being introduced into the<br>

&gt; space, 2) do whatever is needed to be done to make sure sure that those<br>&gt; &quot;non-member former patients&quot; know that they are not welcome and do not<br>&gt; attempt to enter anymore, and 3) pray that the &quot;word on the street&quot; that NB<br>

&gt;&gt; though it is a bit tl;dr. It was my personal judgment from fairly brief<br>&gt;&gt; contact, and yet I had a fairly sharp worry about the person&#39;s being in<br>&gt;&gt; Noisebridge. It&#39;s important to discuss in public how we might form that<br>

&gt;&gt; kind of judgment and expose our possibly wrong/biased standards for<br>&gt;&gt; criticism.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; The guy I thought should not be allowed in wasn&#39;t the main guy who later<br>&gt;&gt; that night got into the fight though I think he was involved. I was<br>

&gt;&gt; worried about leaving the space as he arrived, from my conversation with<br>&gt;&gt; him and the drunk girl who brought him in. He was drunk or high and also<br>&gt;&gt; seemed a bit incoherent, hard to understand, and out of touch with<br>

&gt;&gt; reality. He explained that people call him The Angel Gabriel and then<br>&gt;&gt; began talking about the Bible. He refused a tour or explanation of the<br>&gt;&gt; space. He was not particularly clean and was dressed in camo. I had a<br>

&gt;&gt; further snap reaction to him that was kind of like &quot;Okay... you&#39;re a<br>&gt;&gt; person who has been in prison... more than once.&quot; So a sketchy dude who<br>&gt;&gt; on first sight I think has been in jail or prison, crazy, babbling about<br>

&gt;&gt; the Bible, drunk, etc.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; None of those things alone would lead me to be uncomfortable enough with<br>&gt;&gt; a person to say &quot;You should not come in and in fact you should leave&quot;<br>

&gt;&gt; but all in combination, along with it being late at night when there<br>&gt;&gt; were not many people in the building to keep an eye on the situation,<br>&gt;&gt; and the drunk girl much younger than him who I didn&#39;t think had very<br>

&gt;&gt; good judgment, concerned me. What I said was not anything reasonable but<br>&gt;&gt; was a huge eyeroll and sarcastic &quot;Oh fuck... GREAT....&quot; I came back<br>&gt;&gt; with Danny after about an hour to make sure things were calm, and they<br>

&gt;&gt; seemed to be. So I did nothing and left. Not my finest moment.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; That afternoon I had just had encounters with several homeless and<br>&gt;&gt; apparently mentally ill people in Noisebridge whose situations worried<br>

&gt;&gt; me, one of them Philip who could not manage to respect boundaries and<br>&gt;&gt; who Danny escorted out. Another of them was the lady with white hair<br>&gt;&gt; who is running for mayor and believes the FBI put her in SF General<br>

&gt;&gt; psych ward, erased her tape recorder, and is following her; she<br>&gt;&gt; desperately asked me for help that I didn&#39;t know how to provide. So I<br>&gt;&gt; also didn&#39;t say anything to The Angel Gabriel because I worried I was<br>

&gt;&gt; being overly uptight and freaked out from my earlier stressful encounters.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; I&#39;m not sure, but it seems like part of what was going on that night<br>&gt;&gt; (and over the last few days) was that Philip looks for homeless people<br>

&gt;&gt; in difficulty to take back to his place so that he can provide them<br>&gt;&gt; &quot;therapy&quot;, and kind of hangs out in other open or community spaces to do<br>&gt;&gt; that, and has added NB to his list of hangouts. You might need to talk<br>

&gt;&gt; with Philip for a while yourself in order to decide whether you think<br>&gt;&gt; that&#39;s a praiseworthy thing on his part or whether it is kind of<br>&gt;&gt; disturbing.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; I think at NB we have many people who might be called non-neurotypical<br>

&gt;&gt; in various ways and we might all vary also in our level of comfort with<br>&gt;&gt; that. So for example when someone has a bit of delusions of grandeur,<br>&gt;&gt; fine and dandy as long as they aren&#39;t harming anyone. If they think the<br>

&gt;&gt; FBI reads their email because of their theories about economics, fine, a<br>&gt;&gt; bit tin foil hat IMHO but also not doing much harm. I&#39;m not talking<br>&gt;&gt; about people who might be a little rambly or awkward or annoying. I<br>

&gt;&gt; guess it is when people seem really unpredictable, or predatory,<br>&gt;&gt; incoherent, and plus are not already part of our community, then I<br>&gt;&gt; think, why let them in the door at all?<br>&gt;&gt;<br>
&gt;&gt; The bit about it being late at night and not many people in the space, I<br>
&gt;&gt; also have some worries that the very people who were left in the space<br>&gt;&gt; who might be the ones who did not feel safe because of their own life<br>&gt;&gt; situations and who have been turning to others in the space to ask them<br>

&gt;&gt; to behave as &quot;authorities&quot;. During the day more people are around to<br>&gt;&gt; decide together what to do. That&#39;s part of why in retrospect I wish I&#39;d<br>&gt;&gt; just asked The Angel Gabriel to leave immediately. He seemed like a risk<br>

&gt;&gt; that people there might not be able to cope with. So it was not just<br>&gt;&gt; about my personal comfort level or some abstract idea of safe space or<br>&gt;&gt; politeness or bourgeois respectability. I&#39;m not sure what actually<br>

&gt;&gt; happened that night later on, but it sounds like there was a fight, the<br>&gt;&gt; guy sleeping on the couch was forcibly ejected, and *then* the police<br>&gt;&gt; were called.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; Something felt really &quot;off&quot; about the space and part of that is people<br>

&gt;&gt; not very strongly connected to NB and who don&#39;t know each other well<br>&gt;&gt; either, letting each other in, late at night.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; I think there is also increasing class tension as more of the people<br>

&gt;&gt; coming in are completely homeless and lack many resources and lack a<br>&gt;&gt; network of people who have access to those resources, while others of us<br>&gt;&gt; are comparatively privileged, with marketable skills, shelter, food,<br>

&gt;&gt; jobs, emotional stability, and friends who have all of the above<br>&gt;&gt; resources and more. Homeless not like &quot;temporarily homeless hacker&quot; but<br>&gt;&gt; like &quot;crazy person who has been on the streets for years and has just<br>

&gt;&gt; randomly showed up here.&quot; We have to figure out how to talk openly<br>&gt;&gt; about those issues amongst ourselves without stigmatizing poverty,<br>&gt;&gt; homelessness, or mental illness.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>

&gt;&gt; Obviously I&#39;m no expert in this.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; If people want to make Noisebridge into a community soup kitchen,<br>&gt;&gt; resource center, and squat, and invite people in off the street, that<br>

&gt;&gt; will radically change the nature of the space and the problems it faces<br>&gt;&gt; and who wants to come here and why.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; I don&#39;t want to do that, though I help people out individually in the<br>

&gt;&gt; community where I live.<br>&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; So I am not talking about Banning People but I think there is room in<br>&gt;&gt; our community to speak as individuals to tell people &quot;I&#39;m uncomfortable<br>

&gt;&gt; with you because of X, Y, Z behavior&quot; or &quot;because I don&#39;t trust you not<br>&gt;&gt; to steal stuff&quot;. That&#39;s what I&#39;m going to say to people when I&#39;m<br>&gt;&gt; thinking it, in future. It will be interesting to see what answers I get.<br>

&gt;&gt;<br>&gt;&gt; Other people can decide what approach they will take individually or<br>&gt;&gt; collectively. I realize some may totally disagree with me that there is<br>&gt;&gt; a problem. See what you think when you meet some of these folks.<br>